


The History of the Apis Mellifera

by Sand_Cursive



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Backstory, Family Angst, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6731923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sand_Cursive/pseuds/Sand_Cursive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe had been named a Bourgeois, not been born one. Her first bed had been the downy comfort of warmth and love, nestled between her parents as they slept.</p><p>But nothing could stay golden for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The History of the Apis Mellifera

She had been named a Bourgeois, not been born one. Her first bed had been the downy comfort of warmth and love, nestled between her parents as they slept.

Hair like honey and a smile like fire and her parents had thought themselves rich. Money mattered less in the syrupy, sticky-slow days of childhood. They had less but what they had they piled together, wrapped in a pretty bow and silver paper, and with it they spoiled her endlessly.

“Where are we going?” she would ask, and her parents would glance at one another with smiles that said _We have a secret_ and then taken her hands and swung her so high between them she felt she could kick the clouds.

They spent idyllic days in Paris, wandering historic streets and playing in sunny parks. Her mother would seat her on her lap, exhausted after running and dancing and playing, skin tickled pink against brushes of tall, fine grass. Long, slender fingers would comb through her hair as she would tell her stories spun from well-formed clouds and a musical wind. Chloé would lie back, spine flush against her mother’s heartbeat, and feel the bass of it like the timepiece of the world.

“And then the princess —” her mother would try, and Chloé would sit up straighter, bump the crown of her head against her mother’s chin. “What does the princess look like, maman?”

And her beautiful mother would open her mouth wide and laugh and say. “She has hair like honey and a smile like fire. And the sun has kissed her, because it can see she has a heart that is truer than a rose. You know what she looks like, m’abeille. You see her every day.”

“When?” She’d ask, smile already spreading as she waited eagerly for her mother’s response. She would feel her bend down around her, plant a kiss to the sun-warmed crown of her head as she murmured, “Hair like honey.” Quick fingers darting in around her sides, feathery light and too fast to dodge. Peals of laughter would erupt from the small girl, angling higher and higher, caught in the boughs and branches of the overhead tree. “A smile like fire.”

And when she had finally calmed enough, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, her mother would gently cup her chin in soft hands and tilt her face up. “Can you guess who the princess is yet?”

Chloé would laugh, would spill from her mother’s lap like water, darting back up again with arms spread to the sky and smile triumphant. “I’m the princess!”

A gasp, a hand to the heart, and her mother would incline her head dutifully. “Honored to meet you, your highness.”

And Chloé would bite back a laugh, would lower her short legs into a clumsy curtsey and bow her head as low as she dared. Her mother would watch solemnly, appraising, and hide a smile behind a tender hand. “A princess does not have to bow to anyone.”

And she would smile, front gap showing, eyes twinkling. “Everyone has to bow to a queen.”

Sometimes her father would come. Not often, not always, but he doted on the both of them, swathed them in love and affection as if they held the whole of the universe in the twin sparks of their eyes. His queen and his princess, he called them, and he would lift his little girl higher and higher until she sat on his shoulders, able to survey the whole of her kingdom.

“I wish you were with me always,” she would tell him solemnly, forehead pressed against his as he held her close.

He would close his eyes against hers and smile. “I wish I was too.”

They gave her all his reasons. He was an important man, managing a hotel, and he was needed to oversee things. She didn’t understand exactly what it was that he did, (something for that large, crumbling building that seemed too big to be so empty), why he couldn’t spend his afternoons in buttery sunshine playing with his princess, but she was very, very proud of him, in the way that all children are of their heroes. And she knew, she could feel, that he felt their absences as keenly in her heart as she did. She could never doubt him.

And then, as always happens, her father began to climb. He spent more hours away, longer days toiling and working and smiling in rooms she wasn’t in. Late nights where he came back in a perfectly pressed suit, smelling of cigarette smoke and something sour.

Her mother would push up off the sheets where they’d been sleeping, would tuck blankets smartly around her busy bee, before she’d wander with an air of conscious nonchalance into the living room, and wait for her husband to say hello. Those first, dragging, weeks, Chloé would hear the gentle buzz of whispered conversation as her parents wandered back to their own room, words quiet and gentle to an unconscious mind.

She didn’t know what was happening until it had already happened.

Her mother shepherded her up the steps in a smart yellow dress and pinchy white shoes that she had scuffed up just trying to close the clasp. Her father beamed down, and he was here, he was finally here, they were all here together! He swept her close to him, kept his large, warm hand on her own, an arm offered for his wife to take. They walked to the podium together, in clumsy synchronicity.

The second he tapped on the microphone she was basking in the warm lights of a dozen cameras going off at once, like a cluster of small suns winking brightly down at her. Her best smile was paraded, her dress neatly smoothed. Perfect as her picture. Her mother stood, graceful and tall and beautiful, ready with an encouraging smile and a wink whenever she looked her way.

The thudding of the microphone as he tapped it resonated through the wooden stage, like a drumbeat, and she stood a little straighter. “As you all know,” he began, voice deep and booming and clear, “I am here today to announce my candidacy for Mayor.”

 _Mayor._ She turned to him too fast and caught the blunt edges of her ponytail like a slap across the cheek. Her smile was wide and less practiced but twice as brilliant as any flashbulb. She hadn’t known, but she was proud of him. He would be so important, so wonderful! After all, what did a mayor do that a king did not? The people of the city would all know him, and he would have so much to do . . . Her smile faltered, turning tremulous, big eyes beginning to brim with unshed tears. He would never come home.

The reporters were all clamoring, eager to get their questions in and run to the next, bigger story. They didn’t notice as she shied away from the spotlight for the first time, pulled back by her mother’s firm hand and a gentle hum of comforting nonsense.

She couldn’t look at him in the car on the way home, face turned resolutely towards the window.

“Congratulations, dearest,” her mother smiled, head resting on her father’s broad shoulder. He smiled back, pulled an arm around her and kissed her at her temple. He looked over at Chloé, her head on an upturned palm, watching the landscape pass by in a blur behind the glass window of an uncharacteristically expensive car.

“What do you think, princesse?” her father asked, hand reaching for her shoulder. She pitched back against the seat so that he missed, never turning. “This was your surprise?”

Her voice was so even, un-accusatory, and yet she could feel the stare her mother leveled at the back of her head. Warning. She turned, refusing to catch her mother’s eye, and smiled up at him with a face like the sun. “I’m very proud of you, Papa. You will be a king with even more subjects!”

Her father had smiled right back at her, and she had basked in the spotlight of his warmth and attention. And then, she had turned back to watch the world outside her window, and remained completely silent for the remainder of the ride.

“Why is he doing this?” she had cried against her mother’s shoulder, as three weeks of solid campaigning kept her père from more than an offhand greeting as he breezed through, always on his way somewhere else.

“It is very important work, m’abeille,” her mother would whisper, soft and low against her crown to be caught in the tangles of honeyed hair. “And your father only wants to help.”

“Why can’t someone else do it?” she’d asked, voice low and raw after so many tears.

Her mother had said nothing, merely smoothed hair away from damp cheeks and kissed her on the nose. Wide blue eyes looked down into her own. “Every king needs a kingdom.” And Chloé had crushed her face against the crook of her mother’s neck and pretended not to understand.

* * *

 

With the sudden fame came new, important meetings, where Chloé was dragged out and displayed: a family accessory to complement her father’s charming smile and winning humor. Other children of important public figures and dignitaries would often be there as well, forced attendance obvious based on the stiffness of their smiles.

They often congregated together, the college kids in one group, lycée in another. Chloé wandered aimless as she and the scant handful of other children in ecole primaire wandered together, a close-knit group thrust together by circumstance and boredom and loneliness. Sometimes there were a whole five children who would run up and greet her by name, smiles on their faces less tired and stiff. More often than not, there was only one.

He was blonde and small, with a cherubic face and soft golden hair. She liked his messy, silken tufts, (never in place after longer than an hour). It was almost the colour of her hair, and some days she clutched at his hand and called him her brother. He was quiet and warm and at every function she attended. She didn’t ask who his parents were because he never asked after hers. That was her favourite thing about him. She did love her father of course, and she was proud of him, in a begrudging, reluctant sort of way. But she was tired of bearing the brunt of his reputation as she was paraded around, introduced to important persons and made to smile nicely and nod politely and be nothing more than a perfect doll. She said this to Adrien, (the one friend she felt she had, at these events) only once, but he had nodded too solemnly and said “I understand”. And she had looked into his face, and found she believed him.

Often the two of them would duck together under the buffet table, or into the kitchens, and sit with plates of food between them, picking messily off their fingers. She smeared sauce on the side of her face and he caught crumbs (somehow) in the tangles of his hair and they would laugh together, safe in their peaceful world.

On one such night, after a particularly grueling round of introductions, they sat on a stainless steel kitchen table, kicking their legs listlessly against the cabinet doors. She wiped a smudge of frosting off the hem of her dress, sucking sugar off her fingers. They both jolted upright as the doors crashed open, and a stream of older, taller children in pristine dresses and well-pressed suits flooded into the room. They laughed too loud in the quiet space, too freely.

Two pairs of young eyes watched them as the group congregated near the fridge, grabbing clean plates from a stack on the side and rummaging in a drawer for clean utensils. They sat stock still, frozen, like animals under duress. Chloé shifted, slightly, ready to slide off the counter and run, and her fork crashed to the floor, a sharp clatter that echoed even through the throngs of laughter pealing from the older children. All heads turned to look at them in unison, and she had the sudden urge to flee.

“Hello,” an older girl said, waving jovially from her position by the fridge door. Adrien, ever polite, raised his hand back in silent greeting. She smiled, then, bright and wide and so beautiful Chloé forgot she’d ever been about to run. Short, wide heels tapped on the tiled kitchen floor as the girl wandered over.

“Tiramisu. My favourite,” she said. Chloé’s face must have betrayed her confusion, because the girl extended a tanned, slender finger towards her plate. Chloé looked down at the piece and bit the corner of her lip. Blue eyes looked up through thick lashes and she nodded, once.

The girl giggled. “My name is Adaliz. What are yours?”

“Adrien,” he offered immediately, face bright.

“Chloé.”

The girl narrowed her eyes at the both of them, appraising. “Do you two like cake?” she’d asked, voice conspiratorial.

They nodded at once.

“Well, would you like to know —”

“Adaliz!” a voice cut in. A boy just slightly taller than her stood just behind her left shoulder, peering down at the two younger children as though seeing straight through them. “What are you doing? We were going to head to the upstairs lounge.”

She turned to him and smiled benignly. “I was just telling these two about the downstairs cellar.”

He looked at them properly then. “I see. And did you tell them about —”

She shook her head, blunt brown hair catching him on the chin. “Not yet. I don’t want to make them nervous.”

“What are you talking about?” Chloé burst out, looking between the two of them with a feeling of rising suspicion.

The girl bent forwards. “Would you like to know a secret?”

“About the downstairs cellar?”

She nodded, smile growing. “It’s actually —” her friend began, but she turned and swatted at his arm. “Hush, I’m telling it!” She turned back almost immediately.

“That’s where the best desserts are!” she whispered, hand cupped against her mouth. Her eyes lit up, bright, mischievous.

“Oh,” Chloé said, and relief she didn’t yet understand flooded through her. “That’s nice.”

The girl pursed her pretty mouth into a pout. “It’s amazing! They have every dessert you could dream of! Candy floss and macarons and even (and here, she lowered her voice into the barest of whispers) a _Sultan’s golden cake_!”

Neither of the children had actually heard of the dessert before, but that didn’t stop them from salivating at the name. It sounded opulent, and so, impossibly, delicious. “How do you know?” Adrien had asked, and the girl had smiled and tapped her nose. “It’s a secret.”

“Where is it?” Chloé broke out, eyes shining.

And then the taller boy, all but forgotten, had slung his arm around his friend’s shoulder and said, “We can show you, if you want.”

She nodded, eager, and pushed herself off the counter to her feet. Adrien hesitated for just a moment behind her, before following suit. The older children smiled, and with beckoning hands drew them through the industrial doors at the rear of the kitchen and down a long, stark hallway.

“Where are we?” she’d asked, squinting against the glare.

“In the servant’s halls.”

“Cooks aren’t servants,” Adrien had said, piping up beside her.

“Of course they are.”

“No, they’re. They’re employ-emplor-workers. They work here.”

And her laugh had echoed. “What’s the difference?”

Chloé cut a glare at the blond beside her, willing him to stop talking. He was going to ruin everything if he kept disagreeing, and then their new friends wouldn’t show them the secret dessert cellar anymore. She needn’t have worried. Although Adrien’s face had pulled into a soft frown, he kept silent as he trailed along behind them.

They rounded too many corners for her to keep track of where they were any longer. She followed blindly, too lost to even suggest turning around. The sound of their shoes echoing in the halls were a constant beat against the drumming of her heart as anticipation mounted. At the next left, they stopped abruptly, and she had to wheel back to keep from crashing into them.

She peered around them in the narrow hallway. They had stopped at a dark, heavy oak door, with a tall brass handle, tucked into an impossible alcove. The industrial lights flickered ominously overhead.

“Here we are,” the girl had breathed, an expectant look on her face. The boy reached over and, with a little flourish and exaggerated bow, pulled the door open. Cool air gusted out on her face, and she peered nervously into the darkness.

“Where are the lights?”

“They’re just on the inside of the wall. Are you going?” The boy had motioned with his head, hair shaking over his eyes.

It was so dark. She couldn’t see beyond the glinting steel of the first few shelves, unnameable containers pressed tight together. A chill ghosted out from the room, bringing the faint scent of something sweet out with it. But it was so dark. She took a hesitant step back, and she could almost feel the rising sneers on their faces.

Adaliz sighed, shaking her head indulgently like a disappointed parent. “Well, that’s alright. It was my mistake for thinking you’d be brave enough.”

Chloé stopped moving, but she shook her head, hand bunched into tight fists at her side. She refused to budge, even when Adrien tugged her gently forwards.

“It’s okay, Chloé,” he offered. “I’m here. We’ll be together.”

She hesitated even then, but she wouldn’t fight him. Soft, slow steps echoed in the dark room as they stepped inside. Then, “Oops.” She spun at the sound, losing Adrien’s hand as she turned to meet the heavy wooden door as it crashed shut. Hands immediately reached up, slapping at the door, hitting, striking blindly in the darkness. “Open the door! Open the door, let us out, open the door!”

Her breath was rising, hitching in her throat, and she screamed and jumped when Adrien found her hand again. She could hear them even through her panic. Laughing. “Let us out!” she screamed, fingers crushing her friend’s. He took it without flinching.

They didn’t respond. She could hear their steps fading as they stepped down the hall, disappearing around the corner. Leaving them in the darkness. They were not getting out.

She whirled on him, looking where she guessed his face might be. “This is your fault!” She screamed, and she could feel his shock in the way he gripped her hand. “I didn’t want to come in here! We never should have come in here!” Her breath whimpered and gave out, words dying to a whisper. “I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to come. I don’t want to be here. I didn’t want to come.” Her legs slid out from under her, back pressed against the door, and she buried her face in her knees, too afraid to face the darkness anymore. “I’m scared,” she whispered, and then she burst into tears.

“It’s okay, Chloé. We’ll get out. It’ll be okay.” His words were constant whispered comforts against her sobs, the only company she had in that oppressive blackness. He kept talking, even through the hitches in his breath, the shaking in his shoulders. She could feel his nausea, his fear, pressed up against him as she was.

Eventually the sound of her wails brought a member of the kitchen staff, not as surprised as he should have been when he opened the door and saw the two blonds huddled against it. She fell back against the dirty tile of the hallway, eyes red and swollen as blinked, disoriented, into the light. Adrien’s hand had fallen from her own.

She stood up and ran, never once looking back to see if he was following.

Her steps echoed noisily in the empty hallway. Farther ahead, just past another corner, she could begin to hear them: the tell-tale signs of a kitchen. The clash of the pots, the yells of the cooks. She heard them but she didn’t slow. Her heart still beat wildly in her chest, the memory of the dark still present on her mind, crawling out to grab her. She ran, tears streaming from her eyes, face wracked with ugly sobs. She burst through the doors to the main hall, hair a mess, pulled fitfully from the twist at the base of her neck.

“Papa!” she cried, and she could feel it, every eye in the room turning to her as she made her way over to the tall man in the dark suit. His face fell as he took in her condition. “Chloé? What’s wrong?”

She ran to him, clung to his legs as tears carved their way down her cheeks. She was safe now, she was safe. She clung tighter, wrinkling his pant leg as he gently pried her free. “Princesse?” he’d asked, eyes big and warm and concerned. “What’s wrong?”

She gulped past a hiccup and shook her head, burying her face in his arm. “They locked us in the cellar,” she whimpered, past noisy breaths.

“Who did?” he thundered, face clouding.

“Adaliz,” she hiccuped. “And her friend.”

Her father looked up at the man he had been speaking to, a question in his eyes. She hadn’t noticed the stranger, and she didn’t care about him now. His light cotton suit shifted as he pointed to someone else in the hall. “The Prime Minister’s daughter.”

Something shifted then, her father growing stiff against her for reasons she couldn’t understand. She looked up but his face had changed, clouded. He frowned down at her. “Chloé,” he started, and it was a tone of voice she had never heard from him before. He looked up at his friend, chagrined. “I’m so sorry, Gabriel, but it appears Chloé is having a bit of a fit. I’ll just get her mother to come —”

“Adrien was there too! He remembers, he’ll tell you!” She backed away and glanced frantically around the room, but she couldn’t see any sign of him. He wasn’t there. He had left her.

The tall man in the light suit raised an eyebrow, appraising. “Was he?” But her father leaned down and furiously whispered, “Chloé, you are making a scene. Behave!”

She stepped back, stung as though he’d slapped her. He had promised he would always be on her side, and now —. She wheeled away, mind spinning, her whole world crashing down around her. She stumbled, running blindly as she burst through the doors to the ballroom and suddenly her mother was there, slender arms circling her, pulling her tight against her dress. If she noticed the dust Chloé was smudging on her sparkling green hem, she didn’t say.

Her father was closer behind than she’d realized, throwing his hand in a vice grip on his mother’s arm. “Control her,” he’d hisssed, and this time she understood why the body she clutched had stiffened. Her father whirled on a well-shone heel and stalked back into the main hall, and she refused to watch him go.

A gentle hand on her back ushered her forwards. “It is time to go home now, m’abeille,” her mother whispered, walking her towards the front doors. “We’ll go home and get you cleaned up and I’ll make you some of your favourite hot chocolate, okay?”

She was too angry and raw and hurt to do anything other than walk, head down. Then the door opened, and she was making her way down the front steps. “Wait right here,” her mother instructed, a cool palm pressed briefly against her cheek. Chloé leaned into it even as she was pulling away. “I’ll be right back, I’ll just go get the car.”

And then she was alone. The cool evening air was a relief against her messy face and swollen eyes, and she sat a little straighter, looking up at the sky.

Adaliz had been wandering through the front hall, and caught her eye, the superficial concern morphing into a sly smile. She wandered over, so casual, and leaned down to the girl sitting mournfully on the front steps. “It was just a joke, Chloé. A funny little joke.” She laughed against her ear, breath brushing stray strands against her face. “Everyone likes a good joke.”

And then she straightened, offered a consoling pat on the shoulder, and wandered back into the party. Her friends stood at the side, a solitary group welcoming her back with open arms, with laughing smiles. Chloé couldn’t watch.

Everyone likes a good joke.

* * *

 

Three months later and she still refused to look her father in the eye. It was getting better, though. She no longer left the room the second he arrived. He never tried to apologize. It never occurred to her to ask him to.

She could see his face in her peripheral vision, see his big mournful eyes and crestfallen face as she purposely turned away. Her mother doted on her, took her to the park in her spare time, made her remember what it was to be a princess with honeyed hair and a smile like fire. Tucked her in at the end of the day with a kiss like a million good wishes against her forehead.

Her father no longer tried to wish her good night.

They fought, sometimes, in the twilight hours when her door had been shut and they thought she couldn’t hear. Her name came up more than once, and she was sick with satisfaction and guilt both. Her parents fought because of her, and yet it was so good to know that they still paid attention. That she still mattered in the ever-expanding universe that now belonged to her father. They fought and she half-listened and felt sick.

It hadn’t occurred to her that they fought after her door was closed because there were some things a child should never see.

She had come home from school too early — the park she usually cut through had been under some sort of renovation, so she hadn’t had a detour. The door was unlocked, which wasn’t unusual, and the lights were all off, which was. She followed the only source of brightness to the kitchen, door ajar. She could just as easily have followed the screaming.

“I know it was you! I saw the files. You can’t do that Andre! You are destroying this person’s life!” A clatter as something fell to the floor, underscored by the heavy breaths that followed.

“I am fixing ours! Making it better. I thought that was what you wanted, hmm? A ‘successful husband’?”

“You already were successful! You —” her mother was cut off as Chloé slammed the kitchen door open, the knob banging gracelessly into the wall.

“What’s going on?” The trembling of her lip betrayed the granite in her words.

“Darling, sweetheart,” her mother crooned, rushing forwards to embrace her daughter. Chloé hugged her back, staring stiffly over her shoulder. “It’s nothing, we were just having a loud little talk.”

“What are you talking about?” she’d asked, and though she hadn’t meant to direct it at him, her father replied with a bashful shrug. “Just my job, princesse. Nothing to worry about.”

Bright blue eyes glinted hard under the warm kitchen lights. He hadn’t called her princess in weeks. “Well stop it.” Her fingers curled, fisting in her mother’s sweater, wrinkling the soft fabric. Her eyes never left her father’s. “If you love me, you’ll stop,” she directed, and his head came down, twice, in a jerky nod.

Her mother smoothed her hair. “M’abeille, not everything is so easy.”

And Chloé had countered with, “Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“Then stop.”

Long fingers fussed with the part of her hair, and then her mother stood and smiled down at her. “How about a glass of milk and some cookies?” And she had moved around her father without once looking at him. Chloé couldn’t hold his gaze for much longer either.

* * *

 

Her parents seldom held court in the same room anymore. Her father was gone with the sun, coming home long after the moon made its appearance in the starry night sky. She was never sure, anymore, whether he had come home at all.

“He’s busy campaigning,” her mother would say, and Chloé would pretend not to notice the bitter twist of her mother’s gentle mouth. When she spoke of her father, she could never quite meet her daughter’s eyes.

They spent those days more closely together than they ever had before. He no longer came to intrude on their stories, on their play. He was like a ghost, a shadow, lingering just at the edges of their thoughts before disappearing. Chloé could have counted, on one hand, the number of times she saw him in those next two months, if she had been thinking of him at all.

They had been sitting in the kitchen, her small hands grabbing at flaking, buttery croissants when the phone rang. The noise was jarring in the golden autumn silence.

“Hello?” Her mother held the phone stiffly against her cheek, back too straight. Three quick, short strides into the other room, the cord of their phone wrapping itself against the wall as she bent down for the remote. Chloé could hear the sudden, static burst of sound, technicolour shadows playing against the edges of the door frame. She didn’t get up.

“Maman?”

“Just a moment,” she’d responded, voice too quiet, too even against such a violent backdrop of noise. Messy fingers shoved the remainder of the croissant in her mouth, a hand already pushing her away from the table. Her steps slowed at the edge of the room, not quite brave enough to cross the threshold.

“What is it, maman?”

There was silence for a minute more, before her mother shut off the television and turned swiftly on her heel. She didn’t look at her until the phone was safely back in its cradle.

“M’abeille,” she said, soft and low. She took one of Chloé’s hands in her own, her palms warm and gentle. “I need to go see your père. I’ll only be gone for a little while.”

Chloé looked up, blue eyes unblinking. She didn’t break the silence.

A smooth hand ran over the crest of her hair. “Why don’t you go upstairs and pack up a little bag, hmm? And when I come back we’ll take the car and go visit the cottage in Entraygues-Sur-Truyère.”

“Like,” she paused, eyes hopeful. “Like a vacation?”

“Exactly, Chloé. Like a vacation.” She pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and ushered her up the stairs. “I’ll be back soon.”

She didn’t even watch her mother walk away. She was too excited, too full of adolescent giddiness and anticipation. She never said goodbye, instead running down a wooden hallway, socked feet skidding on the floors. She burst into her bedroom, opened the tiny suitcase she’d been given, and set to work filling it with the dolls she thought would most enjoy a cottage retreat. The mermaid, who liked to swim, and the little deer and maybe the boy with the puff of golden hair that her mother called a fairy. He looked a little like Adrien. She wavered between the last two, the bear with the bright green jacket and the bunny with the white pinafore, before shoving them gracelessly in with the rest.

Then she sat on the closed lid, and waited.

She couldn’t sit still for very long. She knelt down and slid the whole thing beneath her bed (her mother always told her to keep things neat), then climbed on top of it and opened one of the storybooks that had been left on her nightstand. She was too excited to read it, eyes instead skimming pictures as she imagined how nice it would be to use the outdoor pool, and the funny little bread oven. It had been so long since she and her mother had made bread.

She fell asleep with the book open on her chest, the lights of the room still bright against her closed lids. The desperate ringing of the telephone went unanswered.

Her mother never came home. And, less than two weeks after that, she and her father moved into the hotel.

* * *

 

“Do you miss her?” he’d asked, voice quiet, tremble gone. He looked at her with eyes that were too bright and she was suddenly afraid he could see her. He sat at the end of her four-poster bed and studiously ignored the panorama of Paris visible from the hotel windows.

“She left,” she said, but she wouldn’t look at him as she said it. She waved a hand in practiced indifference. “Whatever.”

And Adrien thought _She loved you too much ever to leave you_ but he didn’t say it. He had grown too much. He knew now that self evident truths are seldom true or self evident. “What did your dad say?” he wondered.

She looked up then, and her eyes narrowed. “I’m not talking to him.”

His gaze grew softer, kinder, at the edges, and she realized her mistake. She turned back to tracing the pattern on her knees, eyes too focused. “Anyway. It doesn’t matter.” She let out a shaky huff of air and set her cheek on the edge of her arm. “She’s gone. Whatever.”

He was silent for a moment. “I like your room.”

“Thanks,” she brightened. “Great, isn’t it? He just _gave_ me the penthouse, I didn’t even have to ask for it.There’s an awesome balcony over there too, do you want to see? The view is amazing!”

He let her lead them both out, voice overly bright, happy. “I can’t believe this is all mine.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Oh!” she turned, eyes bright, long, loose hair whipping him in the face. “I didn’t even tell you the best part! Guess what, guess what, guess what?”

“What?” he asked, smile at the ready.

“There’s a maid service! I never have to clean my room again!”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah! Hey,” she asked, voice low. “Do you want to make a mess?”

Her eyes were shining in a way they hadn’t been all day. (Or maybe it was just the reflection of the setting sun against all that glass). Either way, it was impossible to say no. In any case, she suspected Adrien hadn’t been allowed to make a mess in years.

He still apologized when he threw the shower cream against the wallpaper.

They lay back on her bed, destructive tendencies over-satisfied, breathing heavily. She crawled over, hair a nest in front of her eyes, and clicked on the lights. The room was a horror show, rendered in sharp relief from the bedside lamp. She laughed.

“You should come again next week. You didn’t even get to try the desserts the chef here prepares. All ordered through room service, of course.” A tanned arm draped itself over her eyes.

Silence.

“Look, I didn’t forget about your stupid ‘model diet’. We just won’t tell Nathalie, okay?”

More silence.

She finally pushed herself to her elbows, sitting up. “Adrien?”

“I can’t come back,” he muttered, voice muffled against the pillow he’d sunk his face against.

“Why not? Your dad comes here all the time. For, for location scouting? To book shows and stuff! Just come then.”

He shook his head, hair a mess of knotted tufts.

“Adrien?”

He finally sat up enough to rest his chin on the pillow, staring straight ahead at the headboard. “I’m leaving.”

“ . . . Where are you going? For how long?”

“Father is sending me to Germany for a couple of months. For tutoring.”

“Tutoring in what? Why can’t you be tutored here?” Her voice hitched slightly and she made no effort to conceal it.

“I don’t know. I think he’s sending me to stay with family, while he goes abroad on some sort of business venture.”

“Why can’t you stay here with Nathalie?”

“She’s going with him.”

Tears threatened against her eyes. “So what? You’re just leaving? You’re leaving me alone? Here?”

“I don’t want to leave!”

“Then stay! Stay here! Talk to your dad and make him let you stay!”

“I already tried!”

“Then try again!” She was crying now, big, ugly tears coursing down her face. She could feel her throat closing.

“He won’t listen to me! But maybe,” and here he paused. She could sense it, the hesitance, heavy in the air. It tasted sour.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe . . . maybe if your dad talked to him, he’d let me stay.”

Feet pushed against the bedsheets, sending them rippling over the end. She backed up violently against the headboard. “No.”

“Chloé, please. It’s the only way —”

“How could you?” Her throat was thick, words clawing their way out of her throat. “How could you ask me to do that? Because I-I won’t! I refuse! I’m not going to talk to him!”

“But—”

“He’s DEAD to me!” she screamed. It tore itself into the air, and she felt her throat aching, raw. She turned away from him, squinting resolutely against the glare of the light.

“Then I have to go. In two days, Chloé.”

“Then go.” She had to whisper it, in the wake of her verbal assault. She didn’t look at him, either, as he gathered his things to leave. “And call the maid, while you’re at it.”

It wasn’t until she heard the _click!_ of the door shutting that she finally curled forwards and let the tears fall. The mattress would be too damp to sleep on and she didn’t care. “I hate you,” she said. She wasn’t sure yet whether or not she meant it.

It had been a lie, of course. She’d spent days working up the courage (not hard to do since she rarely ever saw him), and when she finally walked into his room her posture didn’t suffer a degree. “Where is she?”

“Where is who?” He’d been bent double over his desk, busily scribbling things on sheets and signing his name on who knew what. He’d just been elected mayor and was more busy than he’d ever been before and she had never felt so much ice in her veins. He hadn’t come home once.

“Where is Maman?”

And he’d straightened too abruptly, nearly upsetting his chair. “What do you mean?” But his eyes were nervous, the lines at his mouth excited. “I didn’t do anything. I mean, of course, I don’t know.”

“Where did she go?”

He walked around the desk, letting papers flutter to the floor in his wake. “How long has she been gone, princesse?”

Chloé eyed him suspiciously. “A few days. Two? Maybe?”

“And you have no idea where she went?” Her father asked carefully, bending down. “No idea why she left?”

“No . . .”

“I see. Well.” He put a hand on her shoulder that she immediately shrugged off. He didn’t try again. “I don’t know where your mother is. Have you been at home by yourself?”

She nodded, wary.

“Well, I’ll fix that right away. Why don’t you let Jermaine take you home, princesse? I’ll arrange everything.” He’d stood, walking back to the telephone and waiting. She turned on her heel and left.

She had heard him, though. As the doors had closed she had heard him pick up the phone, begin dialing before he could even be sure she wouldn’t hear. “Merde! Listen, I forgot about Chloé! She’s been by herself for the past four days I— Obviously I was busy, I’ve just been elected can you— Yes, well prepare the rooms I’ll call the company and have us moved in by next week. Yes thank you. Yes. Perfect. Take care of it.”

And then she had quietly stalked away.


End file.
